Take that, Flipper!

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In the realm of normalcy, certain things just tend to be. If you’re over the age of 80 and napping on a surfboard, generally speaking, bad things can happen. But if you’re over 80 and napping on a surfboard, and you’re Dick Van Dyke and used to flying cars and magical nannies, then you’re absitively posolutely fine. Magic is on your side, and animals -- especially of the aquatic persuasion -- will come at your beck and call.

Dick Van Dyke was adrift at sea until he was saved by porpoises, The Guardian reports. While snoozing on a surfboard at a local beach, Van Dyke reportedly drifted out to sea and lost sight of land. “I started paddling with the swells and I start seeing fins swimming around me, and I thought, 'I'm dead'” the “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang Star” told Craig Ferguson on his show Wednesday night.

But Van Dyke still had a porpoise -- er, purpose that kept him going.

"They turned out to be porpoises,” he explained, and friendly ones at that. "They pushed me all the way to shore."

Van Dyke is well known for his comedy, playing a fictionalized version of himself in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as well as the fast-stepping, Cockney-drawling chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic “Mary Poppins.”

“I'm not kidding," Van Dyke added.

It goes to show that all of those movies where mermaids save princes and dolphins are the aquatic Lassie's aren't far-fetched ideas. But even so, the story would have been so much better if one of those porpoises sang a peppy jazz number, or volunteered to step in time.